Mesa PD 0.00 BAC DUI Arrest?

[rat­ings]
Originally posted in New Times here:

I heard about this arrest right after it had hap­pened. Mr. Squires was wor­ried he would need my assis­tance look­ing over the lab­o­ra­tory data in case it came back with ANY alco­hol at all, since he KNEW his wife hadn’t had any­thing to drink. He asked me because I was the sci­en­tist that he had used in the ear­lier trial where his client beat an extreme DUI charge (still found guilty on the reg­u­lar DUI charge), and knew first hand about my knowl­edge of blood alco­hol analysis.

I sug­gested he wait until the lab reports come back, because I didn’t think the LAB would be up to any mon­key business.

But being pulled over, arrested for DUI, and hav­ing less than 0.08 (or even 0.00) blood alco­hol con­cen­tra­tion hap­pens a lot more fre­quently than most peo­ple would believe. From my expe­ri­ence work­ing in the east val­ley, eas­ily 15% (or more) of the time, the blood results come back under 0.08 — many times 0.00.

The impor­tant part to remem­ber from this arti­cle is that in Arizona at least, you do NOT have to per­form FSTs, and you really shouldn’t. There are no cri­te­ria for “pass­ing” FSTs. There are only cri­te­ria for fail­ing them. And if you don’t “fail” the results are “incon­clu­sive”. I repeat, talk to a lawyer in advance, but there is no ben­e­fit to per­form­ing FSTs. If the offi­cer wants to arrest you and stick you in the arm with a nee­dle, (s)he’s going to do it any­way, and even stone cold sober peo­ple can per­form “poorly” on FSTs. Don’t make your defense any harder than it already is going to be by giv­ing them ammunition.

I’m glad to hear Mrs. Squires is in the clear now, and I hope there is some seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions going on at Mesa PD. Hopefully some­day the Squires and the rest of the com­mu­nity get an apology.

(Full arti­cle below.)

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Heather Squires was arrested for DUI with­out drink­ing a drop of alcohol

By Sarah Fenske
Published in the Phoenix New Times on May 29, 2008

Heather Squires was the des­ig­nated dri­ver. Never exactly a fun thing, but a col­lege buddy of her husband’s was dri­ving up from Tucson to cel­e­brate his accep­tance into law school. So when her hus­band, Jason, asked, Heather said yes.

At Chuy’s in Tempe, Heather’s brother and her hus­band and the soon-to-be-law-school stu­dent knocked off four pitch­ers of beer. Everybody was hav­ing a great time.

Around 9:30 p.m., they decided to head home. So they piled into Jason Squires’ new pickup truck. As planned, Heather drove.

They didn’t get very far.

A motor­cy­cle cop spot­ted the truck as Heather drove through the inter­sec­tion of Baseline Road and Mesa Drive. Not famil­iar with the truck, she’d failed to flip on her lights. Soon the cop was flip­ping on his — and they were flashing.

Heather was ordered out of the vehi­cle and almost imme­di­ately hand­cuffed. She was taken to the Mesa Police Department and charged with both dri­ving under the influ­ence and dri­ving with a blood alco­hol con­tent over the legal limit. The truck was searched, then impounded.

Party’s over.

Heather Squires was no dif­fer­ent from any of the thou­sands of peo­ple who’ve been charged with DUI this year in Arizona. They drank, they got busted, and now — thanks to the tough­est DUI laws in the nation — they can expect jail time, big fines, and an igni­tion interlock.

Except for one thing.

Heather Squires’ blood alco­hol con­tent that night was 0.00. The records prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she was an exem­plary des­ig­nated driver.

She hadn’t had a drop to drink.

Heather Squires is a 29-year-old legal assis­tant, but with long blond hair and whole­some good looks, she resem­bles noth­ing so much as a fresh-scrubbed high school student.

So it doesn’t sur­prise me that the Mesa policeman’s first ques­tion was, “How old are you?” On a dark night, it would be easy to assume she was under­age and out past curfew.

The prob­lem is, she wasn’t. Wasn’t under­age, wasn’t past cur­few, wasn’t drunk. Wasn’t even drink­ing. The arrest should never have hap­pened. And though Mesa police qui­etly dis­missed the charges against her a month later, I think her case still raises seri­ous questions.

Let’s face it. The DUI sit­u­a­tion in Arizona is out of con­trol. As I reported ear­lier this year, dri­vers are get­ting popped after just one or two drinks, with blood alco­hol con­tents far below the legal limit.

But Heather’s case is the only one I’ve seen in which the dri­ver drank noth­ing. It cer­tainly makes me won­der whether her treat­ment was related to the fact that her hus­band, Jason, is a DUI attor­ney based in Mesa.

A few months before Heather’s arrest, in fact, he helped a client beat the rap for extreme DUI at a jury trial, even though records sug­gest the guy was guilty.

The offi­cer who arrested the guy? Bond Gonzalez — the same cop who would arrest Heather Squires.

I would call that a remark­able coin­ci­dence, except I’m not so sure it is a coin­ci­dence. The truck, after all, was reg­is­tered to Jason Squires. And when Gonzalez began ques­tion­ing Heather, Jason imme­di­ately iden­ti­fied him­self from the back seat, as Gonzalez’s report confirms.

Gonzalez wrote in the report that he did not rec­og­nize Squires for quite some time. In fact, when Squires showed his bar card to ver­ify that he’s an attor­ney, Gonzalez wrote that Squires was attempt­ing to claim he worked for the county attorney.

I find the officer’s report a lit­tle disingenuous.

The Squireses agree that, upon his pulling them over, Gonzalez was almost imme­di­ately hos­tile. Rather than ask Heather Squires whether she’d had any­thing to drink, he ordered her out of the truck. Then he imme­di­ately ordered her to do a field sobri­ety test.

Sensing trou­ble, Jason Squires advised her to refuse.

“I didn’t like the way this was hap­pen­ing,” he explains. “At that point, I’m not going to trust him to be fair.” It didn’t help that the area where they were stand­ing was cov­ered in thick gravel and Heather Squires was wear­ing strappy heels. As any DUI lawyer knows, that’s set­ting a dri­ver up for failure.

Now, the law is clear. If you refuse a blood test, the police con­fis­cate your license right away and sus­pend it for a year. By refus­ing, you’re admit­ting guilt.

But that is not true for field sobri­ety tests. They are sup­posed to be optional.

That’s not how Gonzalez han­dled it. When Heather Squires refused the field tests, Gonzalez said he had no choice: “If you’re not going to do these, I’m putting you under arrest.”

“What for?” Jason Squires asked, incred­u­lous. He knew his wife hadn’t been drinking.

Within min­utes, she was in cuffs anyway.

The Mesa police are equipped with portable Breathalyzers — a test that would have shown imme­di­ately that Squires was not intox­i­cated. But Gonzalez never admin­is­tered one.

And though Gonzalez’s super­vi­sor showed up, he never admin­is­tered a breath test, either.

In total, five cops reported to the scene. (Nice use of Mesa’s tax dol­lars, eh?) And not one of them did any­thing to stop the mad­ness. Not one of them noticed that the woman they were arrest­ing was as sober as an undertaker.

The next day, Jason Squires filed an Internal Affairs com­plaint, alleg­ing retal­i­a­tion. He and Heather say there will be a lawsuit.

The Mesa police see things a bit dif­fer­ently. Detective Steve Berry, a spokesman for the depart­ment, tells me that by refus­ing the field test, Heather Squires “forced” Gonzalez’s hand.

“He had to look at the total­ity of the sit­u­a­tion,” Berry says. “You have a car where the other two indi­vid­u­als are clearly drink­ing. He smells alco­hol. And then you have some­one dri­ving with­out their head­lights, not will­ing to do field sobri­ety tests — he’s left with few options at that point.”

Berry adds that Gonzalez likely had no idea whom he was pulling over. Yes, police typ­i­cally run license plates before mak­ing a traf­fic stop, but they’re mostly check­ing to make sure a vehi­cle isn’t stolen. He’s skep­ti­cal that Gonzalez actu­ally rec­og­nized Squires’ name.

But as scary as it is to think that the police harassed the wife of a DUI lawyer, I think the other option is almost scarier.

And that’s this: In this time of anti-DUI zeal, are police so eager to make arrests that every­one on the road at night is pre­sumed to be a drunk driver?

It’s inter­est­ing to read the affi­davit that Officer Gonzalez wrote that night about Heather Squires, intend­ing to ask the Motor Vehicles Division of ADOT to yank her license. (He never mailed it — pos­si­bly because of the blood-test results.)

It describes “blood­shot and watery eyes.”

“Flushed face.”

“Strong odor of an alco­holic bev­er­age emit­ting from breath.”

All this on a woman who was sober.

Anyone at that scene should have noticed that Heather Squires didn’t smell of alco­hol, that her eyes weren’t blood­shot, that her face wasn’t flushed. She wasn’t, after all, drunk.

But that’s not what they wanted to see.

There’s no one who under­stands that bet­ter than Jason Squires.

Two months ago, when Squires ques­tioned Officer Gonzalez in court for that extreme DUI arrest he’d made, Gonzalez admit­ted that he’d pull peo­ple over at night for things he’d never bust them for dur­ing the day. And when a juror asked if he had a quota, Gonzalez replied that he liked to arrest three peo­ple per night.

So what if some of them are sober, right?

One month after her arrest, Heather Squires is still ner­vous behind the wheel.

“Particularly when I’m in Mesa,” she admits. “Like, I would not want to call them in an emer­gency — the peo­ple you think are there to help you and assist you are not.” Even know­ing that she was sober, she says, she ago­nized over whether the charges would be dismissed.

Keep in mind, this is com­ing from a woman whose hus­band han­dles DUI cases for a liv­ing. Most of us would have been on our own.

Honestly, I don’t want to believe that Officer Gonzalez sought out the lawyer who beat him in court — and then penal­ized his wife when she’d done noth­ing wrong.

But a rogue cop is almost prefer­able to a sys­tem that’s stacked against motorists who want noth­ing more than to get home at night. Those peo­ple might not be as sober as Heather Squires proved to be, but after one or two drinks, I’m will­ing to bet that they don’t have blood­shot eyes or reek of booze. You’re still going to read that in the police report.

That’s how the sys­tem works these days.

“We have to fight this,” Jason Squires tell me, “for all the peo­ple out there who can’t.”

It’s going to be a lonely fight in this teetotaler’s par­adise. But if noth­ing else, I bet he’s got the Mesa PD’s attention.

Drive care­fully, Jason.